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The Crack of Dawn
March 07, 2006 - 6:11 p.m.

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Is it me or is 3:30a.m. getting colder? No, no...I know. It's actually getting warmer out. But oy did it cut to the bone this morning. My legs were so cold I had to keep checking to make sure I was wearing pants.

Once at the church, however, all was warmth and comfort. I'd like to say it was due to Our Lord's enfolding love, but this morning it had more to do with an overactive boiler...a boiler paid for by money given in response to Our Lord's enfolding love. (What? You expected the seminarian to leave God out of it?)

Today's breakfast club went nice and smooth...except for the guy with the vial of crack in his pocket. His coat zipper didn't work, so he asked for a new coat. (We have boxes of clothes to hand out when needed.) We dug through the boxes and found something suitable. As he switched coats, hurriedly moving his handfuls of possessions from one set of pockets to another, his vial got caught sideways and wouldn't go in. He detangled it, a bit sheepish, and tucked it safely (if that word can be used for crack) in his pocket.

The funny thing was that I could identify. It's a daily occurrence that something of mine gets caught or snagged or wedged so that I can't move it. Of course, I tend to snag pens and pencils and whatnot rather than vials of crack, but still...

For a moment I wondered what to do. This is about the hardest drug there is and is largely responsible, in one way or another, for the misery in the faces of many of our guests. Certainly, if I found him actually lighting up, I'd have turfed him. But what good would it do to kick him out just for having it on his person? He'd still have it and he'd still smoke it. (I'm having twinges knowing that he's probably smoking it right now.) Of course he'd have killed me if I'd tried to take it from him.

Somehow it wouldn't be as intriguing if he had been smoking crack in the bathroom. There was something so mundane about "Oops, I can't get my crack vial into my pocket." All I could do was shake my head and smile, the way I would if it had been a pen or pencil instead of a deadly addictive drug. Was he a debased and pathetic addict? Yes. But he was also an average Joe, fumbling in his pockets and embarrassed by what the church guy sees.

And that's what urban ministry taught me today.

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